Every Ticket's a Winner - India's Sterilization Lottery

In the largest state in India, Rajasthan, authorities are giving its citizens sterilization incentives. They’ve begun a lottery system. Everyone who got sterilized between certain dates was entered into a lottery to win prizes.

They were falling below their wanted projections of 21,000 sterilizations per year. The country fears of the projections of future population and that they could even succeed China.

So, the lottery had TVs, food processors, motorcycles, and even a car! The grand prize was a Tata Nano, the world’s cheapest car at $3,000.

In the end, the lottery was open to people outside of the state of Rajasthan. They hoped to get 6,000 people sterilized through the lottery.

While authorities claimed they did not receive any complaints about the campaign, family planning advocates from the non-profit Population Foundation of India were not happy with the plan, they said the lottery amounted to coercion by a different name.